Utopia, you are standing in it!

Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor and “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents, was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.

Mary was born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages. Before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons…

Aesthetics carry messages about values. Star Trek, while frequently written about in historical, literary, and technological terms, was also a visual experience with a distinctive aesthetic, and there’s a lot there to talk about! I just wrote a term paper on the topic, and it’s my pleasure to bring you some highlights related to Star Trek’s costumes —  specifically, the infamous miniskirts.

StarTrek.com

William “Bill” Ware Theiss, a gay costume designer at the beginning of his career, developed the costumes for the full run of the show. The iconic uniforms were the third version developed over the course of several pilots, and their final form was a combination of practicality and aesthetics. The two earlier styles made use of velour tunics, chosen for their futuristic sheen under stage lights. Velour shrinks with every wash, though, and since television costumes are laundered every day, the tunics had to be…

Synopsis

Gallipoli is an Australian war film produced by Patricia
Lovell and Robert Stigwood, directed by Peter Weir, and starring Mel Gibson and
Mark Lee, who play two young men from Western Australia who enlist in the Army
during the First World War and participate in the failed British effort to
capture Gallipoli from the Ottoman Turks.

Background

On 2 October 1976, on a visit to the Dardanelles in
northwest Turkey, Australian film director Peter Weir (The Last Wave) took a
two-hour walk on the beaches of Gallipoli and decided that he had to make a
film about the disastrous WWI British-ANZAC campaign against Ottoman Turkey
that occurred there 61 years earlier. Weir subsequently wrote an outline and
engaged playwright-screenwriter David Williamson to turn it into a screenplay.
Weir and Williamson used C.E.W. Bean’s 12-volume Official History of Australia
in the War of 1914–1918 (Australian War Memorial, 1921–43) as one…

On Saint George’s Day in 1377 two young boys representing the future of England stood before the altar at Windsor Castle to receive knighthood into the Royal Order of the Garter (Edward III’s prestigious order). Richard (aged 10) was heir to the throne, and Henry Bolingbroke (aged 11) was Richard’s cousin and heir to one of the most powerful aristocratic families in England. Henry was called Bolingbroke because he was born at Bolingbroke Castle. Both boys promised never to take up arms against one another -a promise neither could keep. The next 100 years of the English monarchy became a period of extraordinary tumult. It was an era of civil war, forming the backdrop of Shakespeare’s History Plays: the weak Richard II, the heroic Henry V, and the pathetic Henry VI. The failures of King Richard II, most notably portrayed by Shakespeare, were felt strongly in Richard’s day, but more…

Last week Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection no matter what conspiracy theory he employs or how many lawsuits he implements to overturn the results. One reason he may have lost rests on the state of Arizona which went blue for the first time in decades. Trump’s commentary concerning Senator John McCain before his passing arguing during the 2016 campaign that the senator was not a hero but a loser because he was captured after being shot down over North Vietnam does not seem to have sat well with the Arizona electorate. McCain, the self-proclaimed maverick when it came to legislation and politics and former POW emerged once again in the 2020 election as his wife, Cindy, and daughter Meghan emerged as a driving force to defeat Trump. McCain’s life story is a complex one due to the storied military history of his family, his personality, and his fervent…